Wealth Management Advisors Serving Santa Barbara & Los Angeles
At Montecito Capital Management, we provide personalized wealth management solutions for individuals and families in Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. Our approach is rooted in a fiduciary commitment—your financial goals, not our compensation, drive every recommendation. By combining disciplined investment strategies, comprehensive financial planning, and a focus on long-term growth, we help clients achieve financial confidence, clarity, and security. Whether you are planning for retirement, managing your assets, or preparing your estate, we tailor our services to meet your unique objectives and priorities.
A Fiduciary Advisor Relationship Is Different
We are “independent” registered advisors committed to improving our clients’ overall financial success. The ideal financial advisory process consists of gathering information, identifying objectives, developing a plan to meet those objectives, implementing the plan and monitoring & updating the plan. The client’s objectives, not the advisor’s method of compensation, should drive the planner’s recommendations.
Unfortunately, this is seldom the case. The vast majority of people who call themselves “financial advisors” or some similar terms are actually financial product salespeople who have no semblance of any type of fiduciary relationship with their clients. Instead, they have a principal-agent relationship with a product provider and a salesperson’s customer relationship with a consumer. Thus, they must do what is in the best interest of the product provider, not what is in the best interest of their clients.
The Problem with Commission-Based Advisors
Additionally, their compensation is determined solely by the quantity of the products they sell rather than the quality of their advice. These “planners” mass-produce “financial plans” that are merely props for their sales pitches. Most of their customers would be shocked to learn that they pay a commission that is many times the value of the advice they receive. This explains why commissions are rarely disclosed.
We seek to understand your unique financial goals, your particular challenges and goals, before offering a tailored financial plan and/or investment strategy. Then we aim to provide you with step-by-step roadmap for your financial goals and share the various realities to be met. By following a prudent, research-driven approach, we propose a balanced portfolio of risk-return that takes into account your individuality. Above all, we focus on trust, clarity and individuality: our fiduciary advisory approach is founded on clear, trusting, unwavering thinking.
What Investors Really Want: Interests are Aligned, Transparency & Trust
In a TD Waterhouse survey (conducted by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates), most investors were found to be unaware of the regulatory distinctions between investment “Pure Fee” advisers and “Fee plus Commission” advisors. One of the biggest drawbacks of the fee + commission model—used by most financial advisors today—is that it often blurs the line between objective advice and product sales. On paper, the structure seems balanced: you pay a fee for ongoing financial guidance while your advisor also earns commissions for certain products or services. In practice, however, this dual system creates built-in conflicts of interest. For example, an advisor might recommend a mutual fund that pays them a higher commission even when a lower-cost alternative would achieve the same results. While such actions may not be intentionally deceptive, they can subtly influence recommendations and erode trust over time.
Another downside is the lack of transparency surrounding total costs. Clients often believe their fee covers everything, only to discover additional charges hidden in product commissions. The hybrid model can misalign incentives around client goals. Because part of an advisor’s income is tied to assets under management and product sales, they may be less inclined to suggest strategies that reduce those assets—like paying down debt or withdrawing funds for major purchases.
The survey found that:
- 88% of investors would not seek advice from these professionals if they knew the advisors were not required to act in the investor’s best interest.
- About 9 out of 10 would not seek financial advice from a stockbroker if they knew they were not required to disclose conflicts of interest prior to providing financial advice.
- 85% of investors would not seek financial advice from a stockbroker if they knew the advisors provided fewer protections than Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs).
Why We Work on a "Pure" Fee-Only Basis
Therefore, we believe that accepting commissions is inherently unprofessional since it impairs an advisor’s objectivity. We believe our compensation should come from the party to whom we owe our loyalty–the client.
We do not accept commissions from product providers. We work on a fee-only basis and in those cases where we recommend mutual funds, these recommendations would only be no-load or load-waived funds (Charles Schwab does not allow commission load transactions on our institutional platform).
Our Fee Structure is Transparent & Straight-Forward
Virtually the entire financial services industry is now primarily concerned with gathering assets under management and applying one rate fee to all size brackets of assets.
We are different from most fee-only financial planners in this regard, as our fees earned for ongoing financial advisory services do not automatically increase with the size of your portfolio. Our fee rates incrementally decline as your portfolio appreciates to higher asset bracket categories. (See Our Fees section.)
In the fee-only community, this is known as being “pure.” This ensures that advisors do not have a financial incentive to:
- Take an inordinate amount of risk with your portfolio in pursuit of unnecessarily high returns.
- Recommend converting hard assets to financial assets.
- Selling you financial products for the advisor’s own commission benefit.
- Advise against paying off debt.
- Discourage you from spending your money or giving it away as part of estate planning
For these reasons, Fiduciary, pure fee-based advisors are often considered the platinum standard in financial planning since their compensation model aligns entirely with the client’s best interests – no commissions, no hidden incentives, just transparent, advice-driven service. This structure fosters trust and accountability: a fiduciary is legally obligated to act solely for the client’s benefit. For instance, a fee-only advisor helping a retiree craft a withdrawal strategy has no reason to push one investment over another, focusing instead on preserving income and minimizing taxes. Similarly, when working with a young professional building wealth, a fiduciary advisor can recommend low-cost index funds without bias toward commission-paying products.
Even for a family managing multiple goals—college savings, home ownership, and retirement – a fiduciary’s flat percent of assets fee ensures that every recommendation supports the family’s broader financial well-being, not the advisor’s paycheck.
Contact us for a complimentary consultation: (805) 965-7955 Email: ContactUs@McapitalMgt.Com
Financial Advisory Firm Offices serve San Luis Obispo County, Santa Barbara County, Ventura County, Los Angeles County & Orange County
Disclaimer: The website provides general information regarding our business along with access to additional investment related information. Material presented on this website is believed to be from reliable sources and is meant for informational purposes only. The intent is to provide helpful information, which should NOT be construed as investment advice. We do not guarantee its accuracy, nor completeness, and it is not intended to be the primary basis for investment decisions. We do not make personal investment recommendations to people or entities except to those who have engaged us expressly for the purpose of providing professional investment advisory services. Montecito Capital Management Group’s ADV filing is available online at http://www.adviserinfo.sec.gov and current FORM ADV Part 2, which describes the services offered, fees charged and detailed company information, among other things, is available upon request free of charge. We are limited in our fiduciary capacity by the firm’s non-discretionary client relationship, whereby the client dictates the investment parameters and contractually agrees to accept sole responsibility for their choices.